Why?

Why?

Each week preachers fill the pulpits of churches around this country and proclaim truth out of one source, God’s Word. Everyday we are told that we need to get into this book and read it, understand it, allow it to fill our lives. We are told that God’s Word is like an All You Can Eat Buffet, never ceasing to fill us up for eternity.

But many people today say, “Well if the Bible is so great, then why are more people not reading it?” Good Question. Here are some responses that I have heard.

3. “It’s Old and Boring” – Many people say the bible is not relevant to my life today but that’s simply not true. Yes, the Bible was written many years ago and in a different culture than what we live in but it continues to have profound impacts on people’s lives today.

2. “I Forget To Read It” – These people get fired up at church on Sunday morning about the Bible, but by the time Monday rolls around, they are occupied with other things. The Bible gets lost in the shuffle.

1. “I Don’t Understand It” – Many, many, many people do not read the bible because they feel they do not understand it. This happens for a number of reasons. Maybe they start reading in the wrong place. Starting in Genesis 1 is great until you get to this person beget this person….this person beget this person….this person beget this person…..on and on and on. Before long you are lost. Other people want to start in Revelation. Starting in Revelation is like a first grader trying to do calculus. You have to know that 2+2=4 before you can move to the next level. Others pick up a bible for the first time and use a translation that is difficult to read.

This is where I want this blog to go. How do I understand what I am reading? Where did it come from? What’s the difference between an Epistle and a Gospel? Why are there so many translations? What about other books that I see on TV but are not in the Bible? How do I understand a passage more in-depth?

These are all topics that we will get to but today we will look at, Where did the Bible come from?

So where did the Bible come from? Did God do a flyby and just drop it down out of the sky? Did God sit down at his big oak desk with scrolls and a quill and begin churning out page after page of text? Did people on Earth just have a great idea and claim it was from God (Some Cable Networks want you to think this). In fact, we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Inspired means God-Breathed. God-Breathed the words of the Bible into his human authors. Yes, there were human authors but the words that were written were the very words of God. Just like a sailboat catches the wind that carries it along the water, the sails of humans caught the words of God in their hearts and minds and recorded them on the paper, which we know as the Bible.

Now I need to further clarify the word inspired. There are many different theories of inspiration today:

- Intuition – this is the thought that the inspired word of God is like a gift given to an individual. Like an artist has a gift, or natural ability, to paint beautiful scenes…. this theory states that the authors of scripture had a natural ability to write these words on paper. The problem with this theory is that the authors of Scripture are then no different than great philosophical thinkers such as Plato and Buddha. There is more to it than that. God is in it…not just man.

- Dynamic – the dynamic theory emphasizes the combination of divine and human elements in the process of inspiration and the writing of the Bible. The Spirit of God works by directing the writer to the thoughts or concepts, and allowing the writer’s own distinctive personality to come into play in the choice of words and expressions. The writer is then expressing a divinely inspired thought in his own words.

- Verbal – the verbal theory insists that the Holy Spirit’s influence extends beyond the direction of thoughts to the selection of words used to convey the message. The work of the Holy Spirit is so intense that each word is the exact word God wants used at that point to express the message. (This is the View We Hold)

- Dictation – the last theory of inspiration is dictation or that God actually dictated the Scriptures to the authors. Passages where the Spirit is depicted as telling the author precisely what to write are regarded as applying to the entire Bible. Think of the author being in some kind of dazed trance just writing out the words God has told him. It wasn’t like John said, “Okay. Now let’s do Chapter 3 verse 16. ‘For’ – Okay, got it. What’s next? – ‘God’ – God it. Next? - ‘so – Got it. – ‘loved’ – Got it. – ‘the’ – Next? – ‘world’ – this is Great stuff God!” The authors of Scripture were more than administrative assistants to God.

The Verbal theory of inspiration is where I stand. While I believe that each word contained from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 is the exact inerrant words that God wanted used at that time we can also see the different styles of writing coming out of each of the authors of scripture.

Now there is no doubt, you have heard of other writings that are not included in the Bible. You have probably seen these big television productions about the discovery of The Gospel of Judas, The Gospel of Mary, and others. In fact there are hundreds of other writings from various time periods that are not in the Bible. Maybe you are asking why are those not in the Bible and why are the ones we have in there? This is called Canonization.

Canonization is the word that used to describe the process of how the church went through all of these writings and decided what were the individual books of Scripture were and which were not. The word “canon” actually means “measuring rod”. So the canon of Scripture is the collection of books that measured up. Now in the process of canonization there were 4 categories that religious writings were placed:

1. Homolegomena – One Word – These were the books that everyone accepted as being the word o God.

2. Antilegomena – These were the books that were initially spoken against. People said, We are not sure about this one. Should it really be in the Bible? These were, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Proverbs, Ezekiel, Hebrews 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Most of the doubts centered on authorship but eventually were recognized as sacred Scripture.

3. The third category of writings you have probably heard of, called the apocryphal books. Apocrypha means “hidden” or “hard to understand”. These were also in the pile of books that were examined and measured against God’s authorship. There are 14-15 of these books and a battle exists to this day with the Catholic church as to whether or not these should be recognized. These books, which do not always agree with the canonized books, are used in Catholic bibles and substantiate their teachings on purgatory, prayers to the dead, and others. While we can gain some historical insight to different time periods, these should not be considered books that God wrote.

4. Finally, there is pseudepigrapha which were writings clearly define as not being Gods word without argument. These included stories of Jesus as a little boy doing tricks for his friends, just to give an example.

God wrote a Book. The Holy Spirit communicated the words. Men wrote them down. The early church pulled them all together. This is the book that we should be reading, studying, memorizing, and guiding our lives. If you allow God to work, this book will transform your life.

In His Grip

Kevin